Race

I am going to say something

and your first instinct may be to tell me how I'm wrong but please listen.

We should not see race.

We should see the complex individuals that are impacted by different factors, up to and including culture and race.

However, we see race. We see it in beauty standards. Or we don't and that causes Black women to torture their hair because it's ugly to have natural hair. Relaxers? Suck. When my sister and I thought it might be a great idea to perm my hair using her relaxers? My parents told me my hair would fall out if I tried. Black hair is not magically immune to the destructive power of relaxers.

We see race on TV. We see it when we watch crime shows- look at that Mexican man. He's not like the others that we put him against. He's not like those... those illegals that we're going to show on TV next to him, just to show how different he is. Our imaginary Mexican man doesn't think that closing the borders between the US and Mexico is racist!

But we're racially sensitive. That's why he's there, you see.

We see race when white women are walking down the street after dark. We imagine it in the shadows. We see it when we hear racist jokes. We see it when we want to touch the natural hair, when we want to touch the weave, when we see Mammy and saucy Latina women and submissive Asian woman and dangerous Black men. They're going to robmerapemeserveme.

We see race. Don't ignore it.